It is often desirable to transfer sheets of, for example, paper between two devices, such as a printer and a further utilization device (e.g. a folder) without the need of a complex conveyor system. In general, such a conveyor system is necessary to prevent misalignment of sheet edges as they pass from one device to another. Misalignment of sheets can cause jams or otherwise lower the quality of the finished product.
Many printers and other sheet handling devices include ports from which sheets are output in serial order. Absent a complex coupling from the port to a further utilization device, these ports cannot be relied upon to output sheets in an aligned and justified manner.
In addition, sheets are often fed to a common path from a pair of slit and merged web. In this instance, sheet justification is highly desirable.
A user may also desire manual input of sheets to a device. A justifier can guarantee aligned feeding even when sheets are input rapidly by the user's hand.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a sheet justifier that can receive misaligned sheets from a port or other source, such as manual input, and aligned the edges of the sheets in a uniform justified manner. It is a further object of this invention to provide a sheet justifier that can be adapted to receive sheets from a variety of sources and that can be adapted to output sheets to a variety of utilization devices. It is yet another object of this invention to provide a sheet justifier that operates with increased reliability.